Shouldn't I have this figured out by now?!?

For the life of me, I can't figure out how to balance working (more than) full-time, friends, church, and being the domestic engineer of my home. Inevitably, if I try and do one well, the others suffer.

Most of the time, it's my responsibilities at home. Right now, as I look around, I swear there's at least an inch of dust on everything, my belongings are scattered. And don't even get me started on my bathroom. It's just disgusting. And I have people coming over in five hours.

So, I'm doing what I always do at this time: scrambling and cleaning the fastest way possible. (Well, after I write this blog post anyway.)

Inevitably, I get my house as clean as I can for people to see it, and make my resolve to keep a schedule and be better. But there's one flaw in my plan: I fail. And my house within two weeks (or sooner) is in shambles again.

But, as I think about this problem as it relates to the rest of my life, I am startled by what a good analogy it is to how we view sin. Sometimes, I think I can just clean up my sin issues on my own. And to a certain extent I can. I can make the decision to be a better person. I can say to myself, "Hey, you know, you're hurting people by doing that."

In fact, if I had never prayed at a young age to receive Christ as my savior, and then later decided to dedicate my life to Christian service when I was a teen-ager, I would be a different person.  It's those decisions that sparked spiritual change in my life.

But the challenge comes when I try to continue carry out those decisions on my own day after day. The fatal flaw in that plan is that I'm leaving God out of the picture. And then, time after time, day after day,  I will most certainly fail. Because it's Christ who holds me up. On my own power I can do nothing. I can't conquer sin by just making decision. Just like I can't keep my house clean by just cleaning when I need to do it. It has to be a daily battle.

So today, I dig deep into God, and I pray: "Lord, hold me up where I fail. God, help me seek you as I make decisions for you. And selfishly, help me to clean my house!